Pearce

David Pearce. The Biointelligence Explosion excerpt: pp. 1 – 16

I hope you
enjoyed reading that- what a ride. Prepare for some fun in the classroom with
this piece.

1. Pearce’s
trope is “modifying your own source code.”Analyze this phraseology. It is intended to provoke a certain imagining
on the part of the reader. First of all, is real-time genetic manipulation a
modification of source code?Is source code an appropriate term to use
in describing part of the human body architecture?Finally, if we are modifying our source code
and choosing to use open-source tools (human IDE’s?) to do so, can you
extrapolate from software engineering processes today to imagine some of the
issues and challenges we may face? Get dystopian.

2. Imagine that
this article attracted serious traction- got printed in the Times and was read
by everyone.Journalists start quoting
it, pundits talk about this future.How
would you (now you are a policymaker) attempt to modulate opinions that flow
freely after non-experts read this article to get people to have some
perspective that separates likely futures from exaggeration?